Primary Navigation

Secondary Navigation

53957Re: KHL challenge for the Stanley Cup

Expand Messages

William Underwood

Jul 4, 2011

I think the problem comes when you try to interpret NHL justice like a court
room today.it does not really apply. To use an analogy I read many years ago
about NHL refereeing and European refereeing, that said in Europe a ref is
more like a constable in Europe in the NHL he is more like a sheriff in the
Old West. To take it to another level, discipline in the NHL it is more like
a marshall in the Old West or a frontier judge and you get the idea better.
In those days if a guy was shot and it was a "fair fight" there would be no
trial. There was the "he asked for it" defense. And every gun fight was seen
differently. Were they drunk? /was it is a saloon or in the street? Was it
in a more settled town or not? How did it happen? Who shot first? Who were
the desperados involved? and it sort of has to be that way. It is hard to
categorize EVERYTHING that happens on the ice into black and white Remember
what we have here. We have a contact sport which by its very nature is a
different standard than most of everyday life. In everyday life you are not
allowed or encouraged to collide at speeds close 20 MPH. Crashing into walls
together is discouraged in everyday life. We do not carry long pieces of
lumber in everyday life that get swung around as apart of our job. Simply
put, in a world like that just as was the case in the old west when a lot of
folks were armed, you were along way from conventional authority and there
were dangerous folks out there, an entirely different sort of justice
prevailed. In the Old West, you had to be armed and often you DID have to
shoot.or you would have been dead.there can't be the same consistency of
justice as unconventional behavior is allowed due to necessity. I very much
about anyone wants contact out of hockey. Now if you want to see folks lose
interest try that! You have soccer on ice and maybe even worse.a true
bore.it becomes skating ping pong...would any of us REALLY want to watch 82
NHL All star games a year only less skilled? It reverses the issue of no
scoring to an excess.suddenly it you just are watching them skate back and
forth and it is a 16-12 score.no passion and the action is so routine that
it becomes dull and repetitive. Now if you are going to hit at that speed
you will have problems happen and the issue is to differentiate between
several levels...clean.clean but accidental problem, carelessness and
maliciousness. And there are degrees. Now what we strive for is NONE of the
last, as little as possible of careless but we DON'T want to do a much about
the other two or you get no check hockey. It is not easy, I have run leagues
and have had to do it and when you straight jacket it you run into problems.
You also need to look at each sort of foul differently, a stick foul you
have to be more strict on, a hit is a technically legal thing that was for
whatever reason gone badly.

Now you can take the view that response that public driven justice is not
justice and it is not but how badly does the public react to it? In Boston
they are HAPPY. In Vancouver they are pissed. The rest are divided/apathetic
and most folks really don't care after the next news item hits. In Philly,
what talk there was died quickly and as soon as you had the big trades it
was forgotten.this is not a murder trial it is a hockey suspension. The
folks who talk about it are hockey types who will keep on following because
they love the sport, for those that complain about, it, well they probably
use that as an excuse to say why they don't watch hockey when it is really
that they just don't like the sport. And in the end all law and justice is
driven by the public, this is why some places allow caning and others will
lot a murderer out in three years and even in those places murderer A gets
20 ye at the start and murderer B gets 5..Even what the DA goes for is in
part influenced by public opinion. Like I say sports are a microcosm..